Naruto vs Ichigo: Who Would Win?

Naruto and Bleach are certainly one of the most popular shōnen manga and popular anime franchises in modern history. A lot of people who have read/watched the one, also did that with the other and Naruto and Bleach have a very similar fanbase, as the two franchises themselves do share some similarities. And while Naruto continues in the form of Boruto, Bleach has been over for years now, but both are still enormously popular. Since both franchises rely on fighting, we have decided to compare the two protagonists – Naruto Uzumaki and Ichigo Kurosaki – and tell you which of them would win in a fight.

Naruto Uzumaki is stronger than Ichigo Kurosaki, mainly due to the fact that he is a better fighter and has a more diverse set of skills and attacks at his disposition than Ichigo does.

Today’s article is going to be all about comparing the protagonists of Naruto and Bleach. You’re going to find out who Naruto Uzumaki and Ichigo Kurosaki are, as well as what their exact powers and abilities are. In the end, based on what we have presented earlier, we’re going to give our final verdict on who is stronger. It’s promising to be a fun story so keep reading until the end!

Naruto Uzumaki and his powers

Naruto Uzumaki is the main protagonist of the anime and manga Naruto, created by Masashi Kishimoto. He is a young ninja from the fictional village of Konohagakure. The villagers ridicule Naruto on account of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox—a malevolent creature that attacked Konohagakure during its history—that was sealed away in Naruto’s body.

Despite being ridiculed and ostracised, he aspires to become his village’s leader, the Hokage. He is carefree, optimistic and boisterous (sometimes described as “simple and stupid”), which enables him to befriend other Konohagakure ninja, as well as ninja from other nearby villages.

Naruto appears in the series’ films and in other media related to the franchise, including video games and original video animations (OVA), as well as the sequel Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, where his son, Boruto Uzumaki, is the protagonist.

Ichigo Kurosaki and his powers

Ichigo Kurosaki is a fictional character and the protagonist of the manga Bleach, as well as the anime adaptation of the same name. He was created by Tite Kubo and is a 17-year old high-school student who can see ghosts. After an unfortunate incident, a Soul Reaper named Rukia Kuchiki transfers her powers to him so he can save his family, after which he becomes a Soul Reaper himself.

Ichigo meets Rukia Kuchiki during an attack from a Hollow. After Rukia is injured, she must transfer her powers to Ichigo so that he can defeat the Hollow and save his family’s lives. After the Hollow is defeated, it turns out that Ichigo has taken over all of Rukia’s spiritual power and must remain in the real world until her powers return. In the meantime, Ichigo is completing her Shinigami duties.

Because Ichigo exposes his friends to his spiritual power, they also develop powers. When Rukia is arrested and taken to Soul Society awaiting her execution, Ichigo risks everything to save Rukia. In Soul Society he fights with several high-ranking Shinigamis. With the help of some Shinigami, he manages to save Rukia, but she still manages to get into the hands of Sosuke Aizen. Aizen manages to get the Hōgyoku out of her body, but his plan to kill Rukia is prevented, although he still manages to flee with his henchmen.

After this, Ichigo has become temporary Shinigami and is allowed to return to the real world with his friends. Using the Hōgyoku, Aizen has created an army which he sends to the real world where they attack Ichigo and his friends. During the battle, Orihime Inoue is kidnapped by the Arrancar; Ichigo and his friends go to Hueco Mundo to save her. They do find her, but before they leave, Orihime is captured again and Aizen leaves. Ichigo then goes to Aizen’s throne room and fights with Ulquiorra Cifer, the Quatro Espada and defeats him when his inner Hollow takes over his body.

Afterwards, Ichigo leaves back to Karakura Town to stop Aizen. After the war with Aizen, Ichigo encounters a new enemy who is part of Quincy’s rebellious army. During the second invasion by the Wandenreich, Ichigo and his friends confront Yhwach at the Soul King’s Palace. During the prolonged fight that followed, Ichigo is defeated by Yhwach, but Tsukishima and Orihime’s combined efforts fixed his broken Tensa Zangetsu, allowing him to pursue Yhwach. Together with Renji and Aizen, Ichigo faces Yhwach once again and finally kills the Quincy.

Comparing their powers and abilities

As we move forward, per our tradition, we are going to compare the powers and abilities of our two protagonists before we give our final verdict. These two guys are quite interesting so comparing their powers is certainly going to be a fun thing to do.

Naruto’s powers

Now for Naruto Uzumaki, who is the second character in our analysis. He is quite an interesting character, as he started off as a very inept and weak ninja (shinobi), only being able to master the completely useless Sexy Technique. On the other hand, with time, Naruto not only mastered more complex techniques but also became – as most think – the most powerful shinobi in history.

At the height of his abilities, he was able to face and defeat some of the most powerful fighters in the franchise. He also has massive reserves of very strong chakra, which are activated gradually as the anime progresses. As for his jinchūriki transformations, Naruto also gradually enhanced his skills, but for most of the time, he only used half of Kurama (the Nine-Tailed Beast) during his transformations, meaning that he only used half of his full potential. Now let us see how the official databooks list his powers:

If looking exclusively at the numbers, Naruto isn’t the strongest character in Naruto; in fact, even Sasuke’s numbers are higher than his as per the official databooks. Yet, Naruto was able to defeat not only Sasuke, but every other foe that appeared throughout the franchise, thereby showing just how powerful he really was. Naruto is certainly the most powerful and most skilled shinobi from the whole franchise and there is certainly no doubt that he has grown since his debut to become a formidable foe for anyone who faces him.

Ichigo’s powers

Ichigo does not rank like Shinigami but his strength is great enough to fight on par with captain-level Shinigami. When in his Shinigami form, he already has great speed and his strength is much greater. Because Ichigo has more spiritual power than his body can handle, he is constantly leaking power. This prevents him from suppressing his spiritual power.

Ichigo’s Zanpakutō is called Zangetsu (斬 月). Unlike other Shinigami, Ichigo’s Zanpakutō is always in the Shikai form. The Zanpakutō is so big because Ichigo cannot control his spiritual power. Zangetsu’s soul is a middle-aged man with sunglasses and a long cloak. He is portrayed as a wise and calm man who likes to test Ichigo in unusual ways. Zangetsu’s Bankai is called Tensa Zangetsu (天 鎖 斬 月). Ichigo’s Bankai causes his Zanpakutō to shrink and his uniform changes. He can also move faster and his reflex has improved. Zangetsu’s special attack is the Getsuga Tenshō (月牙 天 衝), which launches an energy attack from the top of Ichigo’s sword. The soul of Tensa Zangetsu is a younger version of Zangetsu, about Ichigo’s age. He is also aggressive.

In addition to his Shinigami powers, Ichigo also has Hollow powers. After losing his first fight with Byakuya Kuchiki and losing his Shinigami powers with it, he went to train with Kisuke Urahara to regain the Shinigami powers. During that training, Ichigo also partially became a Hollow. The Hollow’s strength grows throughout the series. Unlike Ichigo, the Hollow fights like a berserker. The Hollow disregards Ichigo’s injuries and surpasses Ichigo’s speed and strength. Ichigo has been taught to control the Hollow by the Vizards, who let him summon his Hollow powers without the Hollow taking control. After controlling the Hollow, Ichigo trains to extend the time he has to use the power. His limit is 11 seconds, but during his fight with Grimmjow Jeagerjaques, it is considerably longer.

After his fight with Aizen in Karakura city, all Ichigo’s powers have disappeared and he has become an ordinary person. But after training with Xcution, Soul Society has given him back his powers.

Naruto vs Ichigo: Who would win?

We have introduced you to both characters and their powers. What we could deduce from that introduction is that both characters are extremely gifted fighters and have a variety of different powers and forms they could use in battle. Also, they have done a lot of amazing feats and have defeated amazing enemies, which proves just how powerful they are. So, who would win in a fight between the two? We shall analyse their skills from several points of view to determine which of the two is stronger.

When it comes to pure technical skills and martial arts knowledge, Naruto is by far the better fighter than Ichigo. Sure, Ichigo has trained karate, but Naruto Uzumaki is a trained shinobi (ninja) and his mastery of different fighting techniques is just amazing. There is no doubt that his martial arts skills are several level above Ichigo’s and that he would, to be blunt, beat him up in a fist fight. Ichigo has more experience with weapons due to often using a sword, but even that would not guarantee him a win because Naruto, although he prefers a weaponless fight, has certainly been taught how to use some weapons and combined with that we said before – we don’t think a sword would help Ichigo that much.

As far as energy manipulation is concerned, both have demonstrated their powers in the field. We have scratched the surface of their powers in the sections above, so we won’t be repeating ourselves, but we do think that Naruto seems to have a more diverse arsenal of energy-based attacks and skills. Ichigo relies more on his different forms and the powers he gets from them, and while he is capable of firing exceptionally powerful energy-based attacks and his strongest form can even destroy things with its mere presence, we do think that Naruto, who also grows in terms of power, wins in this category as well, simply because he has a better trained and a more diverse arsenal at his disposition.

The forms each of them can transform into and use are – with all due respect to everything else – the most amazing part of their characters. Both Naruto’s and Ichigo’s strongest forms are absolutely amazing and they are actually world-shattering entities that seem to be more potent than life itself. The main difference between them is that Ichigo’s more powerful forms also seem to be more destructive and chaotic, which is why he had to learn how to harness their powers without them taking over him. Naruto’s nobility always kept him on the right path and although he had trouble mastering some of his skills from time to time, he never had so many problems as Ichigo did. This category is somewhat of a tie as we cannot declare the winner ourselves; we think that it’s a matter of context and interpretation, so we leave it up to you to reach a conclusion about this category.

In the end, we see that Naruto wins in more categories than Ichigo, which is why we can declare him the winner. He is a better fighter with a more diverse set of skills and techniques, and while his forms might not be stronger than Ichigo’s, mainly due to their destructive nature, they are also not weaker than them. This analysis undoubtedly had to lead us to our conclusion, which is why we are so certain of it.

And that’s it for today. We hope you had fun reading this and that we helped solve this dilemma for you. See you next time and don’t forget to follow us!

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